


Book Smart

by levendis



Series: Prompt Fics [77]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Awkward Conversations, F/M, Gender Roles, cuddlecore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-06-09 20:33:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6922375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levendis/pseuds/levendis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Surrounded by lurid paperbacks and muffin crumbs, for once he is totally understanding of the look of exasperation she shoots him as she bustles by.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Book Smart

**Author's Note:**

> for anon, who prompted: what about one where 12 finds some staunchly gender normative romance novel and panics over the thought that Clara secretly wants that and-or awkwardly attempts it, to her confusion and repulsion?

The Doctor had needed something to color-code his eight-track collection with. He’d thought he’d put all the bottles of finger paint where they belonged. Apparently not.

“Nail polish,” Clara corrects absently. “Finger paint is for painting _with_ your fingers.”

He watches her mill around the flat, nudging everything back into place. 

“We need to talk,” he says.

She stops, puts the nail polish down on the dresser. “Oh, that’s not good.”

“Talking?”

“You wanting to talk. You never want to talk.” She sits down on the edge of the bed, hands folded in her lap. An expression on her face like she’s readying herself for something.

“I talk all the time.” He does, he knows he does, she says he does. He talks too much. Or not enough. One of those, probably. He runs his hands through his hair, looking at her pleadingly.

“Sometimes, yes. Sometimes no. And sometimes you’re all, ‘We need to talk,’ with your Scottish doom and gloom, and then you tell me I’m too reckless, or I haven’t thought through my decision to stay, or that you can’t - ”

She’s the one talking too much now, or she thinks so, judging by how her face is scrunching up. Bit lip, hands wringing her skirt. “So what did you want to talk about,” she finishes tightly, flatly.

“Nothing. Nevermind. It’s not important.” He smiles; she believes him sometimes when he does that, or at least pretends to.

“Tell me.”

“It - we’re out of milk.” Still smiling.

She doesn’t believe him. “Yeah, well, that’s what happens when you pour twenty bowls of cereal at once just to measure how quickly each brand gets soggy.” She doesn’t believe him, but she’ll let him get away with it.

 

 

She knows, she has to. How often he’s here when she’s not. It’s a comfort, is all. And when he’s here he’s not out there; when he’s out there, alone, he always winds up…doing something. It’s not his fault her flat is so totally devoid of activities. Making a Catherine wheel out of her smoothie blender is better than accidentally committing genocide, she can’t complain. Or she can, but she shouldn’t.

Boredom, then, that leads him back to her bookshelf. The same book as before pulled out, his forefinger on the top of the spine gingerly prying it loose. Wait, no, different book, just similar. The one from before is next to it, pages expanding to fill the gap. And next to it, and next to that. A shelf of the things, all the same thing.

He turns the book over in his hands. Glossy cover, cheap paper, dog-eared. Raised lettering on the title, his fingertips bumping over. He flips through, flips through again, cracks it open where the spine splits freely and sits down on the floor.

He’s read them all by the time she gets back. Surrounded by lurid paperbacks and muffin crumbs, for once he is totally understanding of the look of exasperation she shoots him as she bustles by. Mostly ignoring him.

“I can’t tell with you,” she calls out from the kitchen.

He waits for the rest of the sentence, listening. Fridge door opening, closing. Cabinet doors. Glass set down on the countertop. Cork, pour, recork. Her gait is slower than it usually is.

Leaning against the doorway, backlit by the bright kitchen lamps, glass of wine in hand. “Are you judging me for my taste in tawdry romance novels, or do you actually find them compelling and want to talk about how Emily should have left Stanley?” She nods at the book in his hands.

“She should have left him,” he says. “Even if he does have rippling abdominal muscles and long, flowing hair. Which are prerequisites, apparently.”

She sighs, takes a drink. Kicks her stilt-shoes off and, half a foot shorter, shuffles over to the couch. He watches her: wine bottle set down on the floor, her legs tucked up underneath her. Leaning sideways-ish, glass held by the stem. “You’ve got good hair. No muscles at all, anywhere, but that’s fine.”

“And this one,” he says, sidestepping the maybe-compliment. “Cassie the maid, whose employer sexually harasses her until she falls in love with him. Or this, this modern masterpiece about the high-powered businesswoman who comes to realize that what she really needs is a man. Is that  - all these books, do you want this?”

“No.” She says it quickly but there’s something slow, still about her. Face half-hidden behind her glass.

“What _do_ you want?”

He’s done it, the thing, whatever it is, that makes her blush. Couldn’t replicate it if he tried.

“Thought it’d be obvious by now. Even to you.” Her too-studied nonchalance.

“Thirty-two books about swooning damsels being saved by brutes and lawyers and sensitive, rustic fishermen. Clearly you find the trope appealing.”

“One, they’re not nearly all ‘swooning damsels’. Two: yes, so? And?”

“See, the problem is - I can’t tell whether I’m worried I don’t measure up, or that I measure up too well.” He puts the book down, debating whether he should look up, or wait and look up, or just keep staring at his boots.

“C'mere,” she says.

He looks up. Her finger crooked at him, a familiar if confusing facial expression.

“You’re gonna have to come up here, I’m not crawling around on the floor. It’s been too long of a day for that.”

This would be a good time to be graceful but he’s not, of course. Tripping a little over the pile of books as he fumbles himself upright, brushing stray muffin crumbs off his shirt. Should - should he act confident? A swagger in his step? Or, what was that phrase in _The Desire of the Stranger._ With a ‘delicate shyness’? He stands unmoving, fists clenched.

“You. Here. Now.”

He goes. Sits down stiffly, shoulder-to-shoulder. She leans against him, balancing her glass on his thigh.

“They’re a guilty pleasure, alright? I also actively still listen to S Club 7, if that helps put it in context. Neither of us are characters in a romance novel. I don’t want us to be. I like who I am, I like who you are. I like us. Okay?”

His hand over her hand, on the base of the glass. White wine, he’s never been a fan - or the red, or pink, or the stuff with bubbles - too much going on. Climate, mineral composition, location, the history of the soil and the varietals and the -

“You’re drifting,” she chides. Softly, this isn’t a fight.

“Yeah. Sorry, yeah. I get it, the love stories are just stories. Silly thing to be bothered about, really.”

She tenses, briefly, like she means to say something. She doesn’t say anything. She’s letting him get away with it again.

Maybe it matters, maybe it doesn’t. She pulls the glass free, bends over to put it on the floor. Back up, closer now, draped across him. Her careful, steady breathing, her arm wrapped around his waist. It doesn’t really need to be said, does it.


End file.
